Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Hellman & Friedman

Microsoft and Silver Lake Submitting A Plan To Buy Minority Stake In Yahoo!

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:12:09 +0000

A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

Yahoo!’s financial advisers Allen & Company and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) made the end of the business day on Monday as the deadline for minority stake offers according to a source with The New York Times.

After turning down the acquisition offer from Microsoft a couple of years ago, Yahoo! seems to be less interested in selling themselves as a whole. After an investor buys a 20% stake in the company, Yahoo! would then take on debt to finance a stock buyback.

Jerry Yang and David Filo holds roughly a 10% stake in the company. The board may consider a bid for the entire company if it is strong enough and if the terms are appealing enough.

Some of the other investment companies that are reportedly a part of the consortium includes Andreessen Horowitz, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, THL Partners, and Hellman & Friedman.

Yahoo! partner company Alibaba Group of China is discussing a possiblity with the Blackstone Group about making a bid to buy the company as a whole. Yahoo! Inc. currently owns 40% of Alibaba so this would be a way for the Chinese company to get the stake in their company back.

DoubleClick Acquisition Finalizes After EU Approval; Potential Layoffs On The Way

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:40:22 +0000

“As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well,” wroteÂ CEO of Google Eric Schmidt on the Official Google Blog.Â “We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For this reason weâ€™ll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all of our clients and employees.”

The European Union regulators have given Google the thumbs up.Â Google can finalize their acquisition of DoubleClick Inc.Â The Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine company acquired Double close to a year ago for $3.1 billion.Â Through this acquisition, Google will once again put Yahoo! and Microsoft in their sights.Â Over the past year, Yahoo! and Microsoft have picked several digital advertising companies of their own.

According to analysts at J.P. Morgan, search advertising will be valued at $28.6 billion by 2010.

While regulators were waiting to approve the acquisition, Google did not have the opportunity to create a plan on integrating DoubleClick with the search engine.Â Over the next few weeks, Google will be taking DoubleClick employees and aligning them within various Google divisions.

Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity previously invested $300 million for stake in DoubleClick.Â After the acquisition, Hellman & Friedman collected $2.5 billion.

[Information Source: WSJ]